Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 26-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen investigates a fundamental paradox: how minds entirely contaminated by affliction can generate pure merit and attain liberation. The answer lies in the power of the blessed object itself. He illustrates this with a classical story: a fly that inadvertently circumambulated a stupa and, because of the object’s sanctity rather than any intention, became qualified for ordination lifetimes later. From this foundation, he explores how the merit field, stupas, and Buddha images function—not through our effort, but through their inherent purity. The teaching then addresses afflictive views and the role of doubt on the path: how doubt can move us toward understanding or become an obstacle when maintained without investigation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 2001 05 24 LR.mp3
UUID: fa421970-53a9-44e3-b404-5300189501ba
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Lam Rim 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 26.8 minutes
Words: ~2,743
Oh, this yes. How we as samsaric beings can accumulate merit that produces liberation. Yeah. How is that possible? It’s not easy.
In regards to the merit field. In regards to the merit field, yes. That’s right. Yeah. By the power of the object, is possible for us to generate that type of karma or those causes that will produce an uncontaminated result.
It’s a little bit like at the time of the Buddha, there was this person who came to see the Buddha. I think he was over a hundred years old. And he went to the Buddha no. Didn’t go to the Buddha first. He went, I think, first to Śāriputra, and he asked Śāriputra if he could take ordination.
He checked, and he couldn’t find a basis of merit within the person that would serve as the foundation for that person’s ordination. And so he refused, and he said, no, I’m sorry, I can’t. And so this person became very upset and started to cry and so forth. And the Buddha happened to be nearby and he could hear him, so he asked him, what’s the matter? And he said, I wanted to take ordination, but I was refused because they weren’t able to find a basis of merit that would serve as the foundation or the basis for my ordination.
And the Buddha himself checked and said, oh, yes. You do have the merit to be ordained. And how you attain that merit was in a previous life, in a far distant previous lifetime. You had been a fly, and as a fly you happened to land on top of a cow pat in the middle of a flood, and that cow pat was carried around a stupa in a clockwise direction. And by the power of the object, even though you were a fly and you had no intention of creating merit by doing that, landing on a cow pat, because the cow pat was carried around a stupa, which was a blessed object, then that would serve as the basis for your ordination.
And so there it’s possible from our point of view to create merit if the object itself is blessed or, you know, has a specific potency like the merit field. That’s the power of the object itself. It’s not coming from our side. Yes, yeah. Circumambulate stupas.
Buddha house. Sorry? Sorry? So anything like that, if the object itself has a certain blessing and so on, then it’s possible to generate merit through the potency of the object itself. Well, it needs to be a merit field.
Yes. It is an object, that’s right. It’s a visualized object. Yeah, that’s right. So why is the golden image physically mentioned in that field then?
Oh, the merit field because it encompasses all the Three Jewels, which are the central objects that represent the fundamental purity of the uncontaminated state. But that can also be represented by a stupa because a stupa is a representation of the mind of the Buddha. And the merit field represents the Three Jewels as well. So the jewel of Dharma is represented there, which is the mind of the Buddha and the emptiness of that mind. Yes, so the merit field is fine, and we’ve got different depictions there.
But a stupa is like a depiction also of the merit field too, like a more summarized version. It depends on one’s ability to visualize. Yeah. Or it’s just the Buddha really symbolizes the Three Jewels, in a sense. From the Svatāntrika Mādhyamika point of view, the Buddha, in fact, is regarded as the mental awareness of a Buddha is regarded as the Three Jewels because from anyway, without going into too much detail there, the Buddha can be representative of the Three Jewels.
So by the power of the object then one can generate that sort of merit. Still from our side of things, everything is contaminated. All our thoughts are contaminated. All the minds that are generated moment by moment are contaminated. Our physical body is contaminated.
So it’s hard for us to generate an uncontaminated result from our side. But through the intervention of an object, a pure object, then it’s possible that we can lay down causes that will produce an uncontaminated result. That doesn’t sound very easy though, does it? Yeah. Yeah.
And visualizing the merit field, and that in fact the beings visualized actually are there in the merit field, yeah, then by those sorts of practices, one can generate that type of merit. Yeah. I think that’s described in other in Tibetan term there is Tawa Chok Dzinpa. It’s supreme view or view really that’s holding the former three views as supreme views. That’s basically what it’s talking about.
Although here it mentions holding the aggregates as supreme. So extreme view, the view that can have these like perishable. Yeah. That’s right. And things that and holding things to be permanent.
Or ex extreme view? The the three viewers that are held as supreme, are the view of the transient collection or the perishable collection. Mhmm. The first one. Yeah.
Then extreme view. Yeah. What’s the other one? And wrong view. Okay.
Those three as supreme. So as supreme among others as the best of their number. Oh, that’s right. As being valid views. And in fact, that’s the final, you know, way that things do exist, the I, the person exists.
We tend to hold that view at present or those views at present. Those five views. Those five are afflictive views. If we have those views, they afflict us in a sense that they create problems for us. In one sense it may seem to us that if look at the world in that way it shouldn’t really have much effect on us.
But having those five types of afflictive view is really at the very basis of our current experience. Yeah. They’re really wrong practices or different types of ethical practice, confused ethical practice that may be set out for us to practice to attain liberation. For instance, in India also from time to time you see this practice of slaughtering animals in order to help someone, especially if they’ve passed away. They might, as a religious practice, then kill a few goats in order to benefit the deceased person, or hundreds of them.
Sorry? In In Nepal they do, in Kathmandu you can see it. They slaughter buffalo and so forth. And chickens. Yeah, this this type of view.
The view that by doing that it could help someone is really about holding ritual, and ethics and ritual is supreme. The ethics that’s mentioned there is not ethics in the normal sense. It’s confused ethics, is what is meant. And their ritual is a wrong type of ritual. Go, Oh yeah, because you won’t understand it.
So what’s the point of making difference between that kind of doubt and the doubt that says, No, I’m not going to believe. That’s true. Here the doubt is about these central issues. This afflictive doubt that’s mentioned here is called doubt about the path, about the four truths, therefore doubt about the path, doubt about the law of cause and effect, and doubt about the Three Jewels and so on. Well, depends on what stage of the process, I guess.
If we have a wrong view about something and then we come or if we have a we hold something in the opposite way to which it actually exists, but after considering the issue for some time, we start to have doubts about that, then that type of doubt is very positive. Right? If we think that the the earth is flat and we absolutely hold that view, but people keep on, you know, laughing at us. And we start thinking about it, we see a few photos of the earth from the moon or whatever, and then we start to develop a doubt that well, maybe it is round. Then that sort of doubt is quite positive because it’s is moving towards an understanding.
But if we simply, you know, hold or we simply maintain the doubt about what liberation is, what the path is, what if the law of cause and effect is true or not. In a sense, without actually trying to determine the issue, then those types of doubts can are an obstacle. In a sense, like in the other class that we’re doing, the Lo Rig class, there’s the seven types of mind that exist, that are possible for any sentient being. And of those seven, the worst one is wrong awareness, which is this complete completely wrong or way of understanding something. And then when one overcomes that, one progresses to doubt about that thing.
And then this and then from doubt, one develops one overcomes doubt and develops a correct belief about it. So in that respect, moving from wrong awareness to doubt, Doubt is a positive thing. It’s a positive step to move to that from wrong awareness to doubt. But just maintaining doubt, you know, hanging on to doubt, being attached to doubt is not a good thing. We need to progress to overcome doubts and move to having a correct assumption about that thing.
So it’s a little bit relative. In terms of wrong awareness, having doubt is much better. But just having doubt itself is an obstacle to attaining the next stage, which is correct belief. But the doubts here are those doubts directed towards the path, and just holding on to those doubts without, you know, really seeking to overcome the doubts, then that’s really an obstacle. It’s really just doubting things, doubting those issues for the sake of doubting them.
But not to say that, you know, doubt is easily over overcome because it’s really only overcome through a lot of contemplation and examination of the issues. And having a doubt about something should be a motivator for us to investigate more, in more depth the issues. But while we have doubt about something, we don’t understand it. So it’s we can’t just leave the issue at at the point of doubt. Although it’s gonna take time for us to overcome our doubts.
You chose to use the word affliction. You’re right. Right. Yep. Where do you see the difference between the two and in the sense of what to use them?
Right. Because there is a difference. The Tibetan word is nyön mong, and Sanskrit word is klesha klesha. The Sanskrit term klesha does mean to afflict, does mean to torment us or create pain for us and so forth. So technically, the term it’s easy to use affliction there.
And those afflictions are then ignorance, attachment, anger, doubt, wrong view, and so on. Don’t like personally, don’t like to use the word delusion there because although those views are deluded or the afflictions themselves or the others like anger, attachment, and so forth are deluded, to call them delusion is almost implying that they’re a type of ignorance, which they aren’t. It’s really to separate them out because delusion is quite similar to ignorance, isn’t it? If we say someone’s deluded, it means they’re ignorant about something, doesn’t it? The function of ignorance, which is really like delusion, is just being unaware of the object.
That’s what ignorance is. Its main function is just to be unaware, to not know the object. Whereas attachment, its function primarily is being attracted to the positive aspects of things. It is deluded in a sense that it is supported by ignorance. It only exists with ignorance, but it isn’t ignorance and so on.
The other root afflictions also are similar. Their function is separate from ignorance itself. And even though they’re deluded, in a sense, not ignorance. They’re not their main function is not that of not knowing the object, but it’s in a sense of their main function is the way that they interpret the object based on ignorance. You know, like attachment is interpreting the object to be attractive or it’s focusing or it’s holding the attractive aspects of the object, whereas anger is holding the negative aspect.
Pride is focused on ourselves and having a puffed up sense of our own ability. It’s deluded, but if one says it’s delusion, it’s implying that it’s like ignorance and has the function of ignorance, which it doesn’t quite have. Another reason is that also in the text there is something called Nyön Mong Chen Gyi Ma Rig Pa and Nyön Mong Chen Ma Yin Pa’i Ma Rig Pa, which we could put into English as something like afflictive ignorance and nonafflictive ignorance. There are some types of ignorance which actually afflict us. Our current type of ignorance is like that.
But there are other types of ignorance such as the ignorance that exists in the continuum of an arhat or a liberated being, which is called non afflictive ignorance. If we use delusion for that term, then we would have to have two types of ignorance, deluded ignorance and non-afflictive ignorance. And one can construe a meaning there, but it’s more difficult if one’s using delusion for that term to try and pinpoint the meaning of non-afflictive ignorance, what that would be. That’s right. That’s basically the meaning of the term in Tibetan and in Sanskrit, that they do afflict us.
They do create problems for us. They are deluded. All of these states are deluded as well. In fact, they rest on ignorance. So in that sense, they’re deluded.
Anyway, this is not so not really easy material to deal with. So it does take some some energy to think through these issues. And it’s not easy. Actually, we come together late, you know, at seven in the evening and go through till ten. And, really, it’s very good that people stay to this time of night.
Of course, in the monasteries, I said we should have, we have things like, means debating all night. That’ll be very good to have here, in fact. We just keep discussing until dawn these issues. Then if you have much doubt about whether they wanna do that. Well, you don’t have any choice.
If you don’t go, then the master of discipline will come along and, will chase you up. Yeah. So if you’re in a class, actually, Prajñāpāramitā, there’s one class called Prajñāpāramitā and then the Uma (Madhyamaka). Prajñāpāramitā is the beginning of the Prajñāpāramitā studies. That class alternates with the class studying Mādhyamika, and they must alternately stay up.
Well, in Tibet, those classes had to stay up all night. Every second day? More or less. Yeah. And, yeah, and you just, you know, you debate anyway from say six until about ten in the evening, then you have an hour off, gonna have a cup of soup or something.
And then you start at about eleven o’clock, the gong goes again, and you go out to the debate grounds and But we used to get off early. We’d only have to debate until about one in the morning, and then it was okay if we went off. But in Tibet, I used to debate all through the night. Sorry? And then when the Gong goes for the following day, then you go to yeah.
Puja. Puja starts at five thirty in the morning. So So Well, maybe you get your second wind around that time, isn’t it? Especially well, if you can debate one issue for a long time, you know, it’s then, you know, one starts to get clarity on these issues. At night is a really good time.
It’s quiet. Everyone else is asleep. Well, even the Dalai Lama gets up at, you know, three, four in the morning, starts his practice, and that’s a very good time because it’s very quiet. So the debate is just as big as at night as it is in the morning? Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, well, it it used to depend. You know, we’d start off pretty vigorously, but then Yeah. After twelve at night, you know, people are starting to nod off and you wake people up. Until unless, you know, there’s a very really interesting debate starting up and then people would wake up and get into it.
But that’s very good to do. Maybe we should do it one or two times during the year. Have Yeah. Anyway, we should stop there.